The RedMolly Picayune-Democrat

Pilau

...is another word for rice pilaf, which is one of the first things I can remember learning how to cook.

Mom always made it in her big old flame orange Le Creuset French oven, which I always assumed was called a "rice pilaf pot." I really don't remember her making much else in it. She still has it, I think; the enamel is nearly worn off the bottom of the pot, the insides are permanently darkened, but it still produces damn fine rice pilaf.

We had sirloin steak in the refrigerator (thanks, Mom!), and Jim wanted to make steak au poivre, so I decided to make pilaf to go with it in my own Le Creuset French oven (again, thanks, Mom!).

I love making pilaf, because (a) it's so ingrained in my mind that I don't need a recipe, and (b) it's a uniquely sensual thing to cook. Getting it right depends entirely on listening for the sound of the butter hissing in the pan, looking for the edges of the rice grains to turn translucent as they saute, smelling the onions as they slowly soften into unctuous goodness. It's not a bit hard, and it's entirely rewarding.

Here's how I make it (and yes, I know there are probably as many variations on rice pilaf as there are cooks who cook it):

Rice Pilaf
2 Tbsp butter
1 onion, cut into eighths and thinly sliced--you can also just chop it, but I kind of like the larger onion pieces
1.5 cups long-grain white rice
A handful (probably about 3 oz.) of thin pasta--vermicelli is nice; what I had on hand today was spaghetti--broken into roughly 2" lengths
About 1/2 tsp crushed red pepper
2.5 cups chicken or vegetable broth--if you don't have homemade on hand, as I didn't today, it's nice to make it with Better than Bouillon with water from an electric kettle so it's piping hot when it goes into the pot and doesn't take forever to boil
A couple pinches of salt
A few generous grinds of black pepper
2-3 sprigs of fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped (optional--I didn't have any this time)

Melt the butter in a heavy-bottomed pot over medium heat. When it's hot enough that a bit of onion dropped into it sizzles, add the onion, rice, and pasta; cook, stirring frequently, until pasta begins to toast, onion becomes limp and edges of rice grains turn translucent. This will probably take about 5 minutes. Somewhere in there, sprinkle the crushed red pepper into the pot and keep stirring. If you're making the broth from Better than Bouillon or another chicken base, take advantage of this time to heat up the water.

Add broth and bring to a boil, stirring frequently. Cover, reduce heat to low and simmer 15 minutes. Turn off heat and allow to sit, lid undisturbed, for 5 more minutes.

Salt and pepper to taste; stir in chopped fresh parsley, if you like; serve forth. Good with pan-seared steak, baked chicken, roasted vegetables or just about anything else, really.

Variation: Replace 1/2 cup of the chicken broth with 1/2 cup of dry white wine. Mmmm.

Kitchen puttering and the gift of time

It's Saturday night on a holiday weekend. You have some potential upcoming projects brewing in the wings (how's that for a mixed metaphor?), but nothing super-urgent that needs to be handled RIGHT NOW. You have most of the leftovers of a Thanksgiving dinner: mashed potatoes, partially demolished turkey, various odds & ends of tastiness. And you have an absolute bounty of winter vegetables, leeks and beets and carrots and an utterly gorgeous organic butternut squash, all of which you picked up at the farmer's market thinking you were going to use them for Thanksgiving... but then a couple hours later your T-day plans changed and the veggies were left to languish.

So what do you do? You putter, of course. You start by cutting the greens and ends off the beets and tossing them into a 400-degree oven. Then you peel and cube the squash, consider the carrots, wander upstairs to mess about on the internet and discover that not only can you roast leeks, but that they're reputedly fabulous that way. So you return to the kitchen, wash the leeks well, and cut them into tempting little concentric rounds. Mixed with the squash, they're now plopped onto the baking sheet next to the beets... but you know they'll need a little boost of flavor, so you drizzle them with olive oil, sprinkle them with salt and pepper and gently mix together with your beloved silicone spoon-ula.

On to the turkey. You discover that, far from being an onerous chore, cutting every conceivable scrap of meat off the bony carcass is actually sort of relaxing... sort of Zen. The rhythm of the knife against the cutting board is soothing. All is well.

It occurs to you that when you mix the vegetables and turkey together, the beets are immediately going to stain everything a lovely but frankly unappetizing sort of reddish-purple. You ponder this, and wonder if your children will turn up their noses at anything of such a hue. You decide this is likely.

A plan starts slowly, tentatively, to take root in your mind. You get a little excited, but try not to show it. Visible maternal excitement is often a cue for unwarranted filial misbehavior.

You dig through the freezer. There it is! A quart-sized zip-top bag, brimming with frozen chicken broth you made yourself on a previous leisurely cooking adventure. You pull it out, run hot water over the bag to loosen the icy goodness within, slide the yellowish mass into a saucepan and start reheating it gently on the stove.

You toss a chunk of butter into a large soup pot, let it start melting and pop the container of mashed potatoes into the microwave for a couple of minutes. Meanwhile, you scatter flour over the butter and cook up a roux that, while delightfully aromatic, is probably not going to be enough to thicken the whole sauce. No problem. You measure out a little over a cup of half-and-half and whisk a couple tablespoons of cornstarch into it.

Now the broth goes into the roux; it all comes together in a bubbling golden whole. You top it off with the cream-and-cornstarch mix, bring it to a boil and let it simmer, thickening slowly. After a bit, you season with salt and pepper, then dip your spoon in for a taste.

Oh. My. That is good, isn't it? You call over a passing child and offer him a taste, too. He approves wholeheartedly--so much so that he's almost double-dipped his spoon into the sauce before you can stop him. Clean spoons only for tasters, buddy!

Time to check on the veggies. Ooh. They are just about perfect at this point, about 40 minutes after first going into the oven; your testing fork slides easily into one of the beets, releasing a gush of flavorful (and very red) juice. You pull the tray from the oven, set it aside to cool a little, then rub the beets with a paper towel until their skin comes off in chunks (in the process, staining your hands a brilliant but transitory purple). You decide to go with your gut feeling and serve the beets separately from everything else; it's the work of a minute to cube them, toss them in a bowl with salt and pepper, garnish them with a little balsamic vinegar. They'll rest, coming to an even-more-delectable room temperature, while you work. No telling how many beet morsels will end up popped into your mouth before dinner is ready, though.

Now you fold the turkey, squash and leeks into the sorta-velouté sauce. Let that simmer for a minute, just until the turkey is heated through. Then scoop it, bit by bit (because there was just a tad more sauce than you wanted) into a greased baking dish. Spoon the heated mashed potatoes delicately over the top, spreading them out just a little so that potato meets dish-edge all the way around.

Pop the whole thing into a 350-degree oven. Bake for twenty minutes; during this time you'll amaze yourself by summoning up the energy to clean up a startlingly messy kitchen. Then sprinkle the top with a handful of shredded cheese and a light dusting of paprika; return to the oven for a final five cheese-melting minutes; and prepare yourself and your dinner companions for a really astonishingly tasty meal.

Yes, they'll even eat the beets. And be disappointed that there aren't enough for seconds.

Serve with a glass of cold Portland tap water and a generous helping of Spirited Away.

Thanksgiving: the aftermath

So you cook and you cook and you cook and you cook, and then you eat for like 15 minutes and 10 minutes of that is spent remonstrating with your children about their abysmal table manners (though, in their defense, Papa did say they could pick up the turkey legs and tear at them a la Renaissance Faire), and then you clean and you clean and you clean and you clean.

At least we had good company at Jason & Lucy's house, though. (That's Lucy with the stuffing leftovers up there.)

The turkey was fantastic this year, as it was last year. I think we've officially nailed it:

JIM NEWMAN'S GUARANTEED FOOLPROOF ROAST TURKEY
(AND MOLLY'S FLAVORFUL GRAVY)

You will need:

• a turkey (we're assuming here, for the sake of argument, that you are using a 12-pound bird, which serves 6-8 nicely and provides adequate leftovers)
• a large bucket or other receptacle, with a lid
• kosher salt
• brown sugar
• a generous pinch of whole cloves, and another of allspice berries
• water
• butter
• an onion
• some celery
• herb sprigs (rosemary is nice)--optional
• flour--probably about 3 Tbsp
• 1 cup white wine
• 1 cup chicken broth/stock/liquid
• 1 more Tbsp butter (because hey, it's a party!--but if you leave this out, it's not the end of the world)
• roasting pan, rack and whisk (I like the flat-bottomed spring sort, as shown up there on the right, because it lets you get into all the little fidgety corners of the pan)

The day before you plan to serve the turkey, make the brine: boil 1 gallon water, dissolve 2 cups kosher salt and 1 cup brown sugar in it. Cool to room temperature-ish. Place the turkey in the bucket/receptacle. (Make sure all giblets, necks and other miscellaneous bits of anatomy are removed BEFORE you do this.) Pour the brine over it; sprinkle in the cloves & allspice berries; add cold water until turkey is completely covered. Put lid on receptacle and refrigerate (or, if you live in the Great Frozenish Northwest as we do, you can find a cool spot outdoors to stick it... the temperature didn't go above 45 the whole time we were brining, so we figured it was safe). Leave until 3 hours before you want to eat.

Heat oven to 400 degrees. Remove turkey from brine; pat dry inside and out. Rub inside and out with softened butter. Peel and quarter the onion; cut the celery into largeish pieces; stuff vegetables and herbs into turkey cavity.

Place rack in roasting pan. Make obligatory joke about "nice rack." Place turkey on rack, breast side down. Put turkey in oven and roast, undisturbed, unbasted, for two hours.

Reduce oven heat to 350. Remove turkey from oven; perform complicated flipping maneuver, best handled by two chefs, that results in turkey resting on rack, breast side up. Make obligatory joke about "flipping the bird." Return to oven; roast for another 30 minutes.

Take turkey out of oven; remove rack and turkey from pan and place on carving board. Tent lightly with aluminum foil. Place roasting pan on stove so that it covers two burners. Set both burners to medium-low heat. Heat up turkey drippings slightly; fish out any large onion/celery chunks.

Sprinkle flour into roasting pan. Whisk madly until drippings and flour coalesce into a pleasing roux, flour loses its pale color and the whole thing starts to smell fabulous. Whisk in white wine and broth; cook, stirring constantly, until you have gravy. At this point, you can whisk in the last bit of butter, or you can just forget about it. The gravy will taste fine without it.

Pour gravy into a gravy boat (or, as we did, a fancy porcelain creamer), straining out the dark bits if you're fussy or leaving them in if you're not.

Carve turkey; serve with gravy.

Also: just because you're married to a photographer doesn't mean you're going to get any actual, you know, family Thanksgiving photos. Just saying.

November Rain

It's a cold, drizzly day here in Paradise City.* Yesterday was, too, and so I decided to make some bean soup. And because I was feeling unaccountably ambitious (and thrifty!), I decided to start with dried beans rather than the canned variety.

According to Mark Bittman, it is not in fact necessary to soak beans before cooking, either overnight or via the "quick-soak" method (which in practice always leads to my forgetting about the stupid things and letting them boil over). Just pick them over, rinse well, cover with water and simmer away. He even recommends salting them halfway through cooking, rather than waiting to the end to salt as many authors suggest (apparently they believe beans toughen or fall apart or something if you salt them before they're finished). But Bittman says that beans salted before they're completely cooked will absorb the salt better and end up more thoroughly seasoned. If it's good enough for Bittman, it's good enough for me, so... OK.

I had a bag of dried "bean soup mix" from the bulk bins at Winco, containing everything from lentils to split peas to kidney beans to black-eyed peas. After reading Bittman's wisdom on all things leguminous, I sort of wished I had just one type of bean to deal with, since each of these beans takes a very different length of time to cook. But oh well... there was nothing to be done about it.

So I tossed about 3 cups of beans into a pot with plenty of water (I've scorched more than one batch of beans in my time), brought them to a boil, turned the heat down and simmered them, covered, for about half an hour. Then I tossed in a teaspoon or so of salt and simmered them for about 10 more minutes while I did the following:

• chopped 2 peeled carrots and 2 ribs of celery into 1/2" pieces**
• chopped 1 onion fairly finely
• sweated the above for about 5 minutes over med-low heat in 1 Tbsp of oil
• cut 12 oz of smoked sausage into 3/4" pieces
• minced 4 cloves of garlic
• tossed the above into the pan with the veggies and cooked, stirring frequently, until the sausage was beginning to brown around the edges and the whole thing smelled delicious

When the veggies were suitably sweated (wow, that sounds so appealing), I drained the beans and combined them with the veggies and sausage in the Crock-Pot, along with the following:

• a can of diced tomatoes with green chiles
• a can of stewed tomatoes
• 2 cups of chicken broth
• a sprinkling of red pepper flakes
• a few generous shakes of Frank's Red Hot sauce
• a pinch of salt
• a solitary bay leaf, added on top like a little Polynesian raft

The beans, as I had suspected, were cooked to varying degrees of doneness. The kidney beans and black-eyed peas were just tender, while the lentils and split peas were already starting to disintegrate into mush. But I soldiered bravely on anyway...

So I turned the Crock-Pot to Low, put the lid on and got about the business of the day (including wrapping Rhys into the "toga" of his Caesar costume 3 4 5 times, and the last time included pinning the damn thing to his shirt in three places). We trick-or-treated, returned home with a daunting load of candy, and made biscuits to go along with our soup, which was smelling very very tasty by this time.

Rhys wanted to help. "Of course you can, Sweet Child o' Mine,"*** I said. He stirred the cheese into the biscuit dough and helped me "blop" the dough onto the cookie sheet in appropriately-sized blops.

Ten minutes later, dinner was done! The lentils and split peas had vanished into the mass of soup, but they had thickened it very nicely--I think the texture was much better than it would have been had they all hung together. The soup was tasty enough that Fisher and I each had two bowls, and it made enough that we're having leftovers for lunch today (my favorite--yay!).

So the moral of the story is that you don't have to presoak dried beans. This liberating revelation is sure to lead to beans, with their humble but hearty and nutritious character, appearing on our table more frequently. And since I know you're wondering... no, no, I have not noticed any increase in flatulence among the members of our household today. Thank freakin' goodness. There's enough methane toxicity around here as it is...

* Sorry, sorry, sorry. I solemnly swear not to make any more gratuitous GNR references. It was just sort of irresistible.

** No, I didn't measure. Shut up.

*** Yeah, I lied. Sorry, again.

Cheapskates, cheap thrills, and cheap eats

How to save money:

1. Don't turn on the heater until November. Can you make it? Sure! Just buy everyone in the family a suit of long underwear and button up. Make your shivering a point of pride. (And don't tell anyone about the heat pad you're hogging on your side of the bed. 'Cause, y'know, your baaaaack hurrrrrts. Oughtn't you to go have a lie-down about now?)

2. Inform your kids several months in advance that you will not be doing typical Christmas presents. Keep an eye out for an Xbox instead (they're going cheap on Craigslist these days!), and save your pennies for when Guitar Hero World Tour comes out. Because the family that rocks out together... uh, stays together?

3. Make this soup. Be surprised when your kids don't turn up their noses at it. Be astonished when they each polish off the first bowl, inhale a second and ask for thirds. (Sorry, kids... we gotta save some for lunch tomorrow.)

Cabbage Soup
1 Tbsp cooking oil or butter
1 medium onion, chopped
1 medium head green cabbage, chopped (about 10 cups)
4 cups chicken (or veggie) broth
1/2 lb smoked sausage (or not... but the sausage is pretty good)
1/2 cup flour
1 tsp salt
Black pepper & red pepper flakes to taste
1 cup milk
2 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce (which the kids delight in pronouncing "Whirr-cess-ter-shyer")

Heat oil or butter in a soup pot over medium heat. Add onion and saute until translucent. Add cabbage and cook, stirring frequently, until it has wilted down a little. Add broth; bring to a boil; reduce heat and simmer, covered, 10-15 minutes. (Probably more like 10.) Add sausage; heat through.

Whisk together flour, milk, salt and pepper until smooth. Stir into soup; cook and stir about 2 minutes, until thickened. Whisk in Worcestershire sauce. Serve it forth with thrifty gusto.

Serves 8 or 10, depending on how much your kids eat at once; and I added up what I spent on all the ingredients (well, sausage, cabbage, onion, broth & milk anyway) and came out to less than $3. Poor People Power!

Note that you could also use bulk sausage, if it were cheaper than the smoked variety, and just saute the onion and cabbage in that instead of using oil/butter. Flexibility is key.

Fall has fell

Ch-check it out:
 

No more temps in the 80s. Not much more in the way of temps in the 70s. This makes me happy.

It also makes me hungry for soup, which is what we had for lunch today:

Red Pepper Soup

3 red bell peppers, seeded & chopped
1 large-ish carrot, scraped & chopped
1 medium onion, chopped
1 small celery rib, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 Tbsp olive oil
4 cups chicken (or vegetable) broth
1/4 cup uncooked long-grain rice
1 Tbsp minced fresh (or 1 tsp dried) thyme
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
A couple pinches of cayenne pepper
A couple pinches of red pepper flakes

In a soup-making vessel, saute vegetables in oil until onion is translucent, about 5 minutes. Stir in broth, rice and all seasonings except red pepper flakes. Heat to a boil; reduce heat and simmer, covered, 20-25 minutes until rice is done and vegetables are tender.

Let cool for about 15 minutes (or a little less, if you have an immersion blender). Puree in batches with a regular blender, or puree in situ with an immersion blender. Return to pot; add red pepper flakes; heat through gently.

We didn't have this with it, but I think a little swirl of crème fraîche on the top would have been just lovely. Even without this lily-gilding, however, the soup was delicious enough that the boys polished theirs off straightaway and Jim and I went back for generous seconds.

***

I've always liked spring and fall better than either summer or winter--they're seasons of moderation, pleasant times, not too hot or too cold. But since my limited Portland experience seems to indicate that we have crap springs here in the great Northwest (rain, rain, rain, rain and more rain), I guess I'll have to content myself with fall alone. (At least the summers aren't so hot that they can't be enjoyed.)

But weather aside, there's something about fall that seems to invite both introspection and a sort of coziness the other seasons lack. The crisp mornings invite you to snuggle a little longer in bed; the sun warms up the afternoons just enough to beckon you outside for some leaf-raking or maybe some last-chance tomato harvesting. The evenings fairly cry out for my favorite kinds of dinners: hearty stews, roasted vegetables, good rib-sticking meals that leave you feeling pleasantly warm & drowsy after eating them. And once fall shows up and starts sniffing around, Thanksgiving's not far behind... my favorite holiday of all, I think. (Who can argue with a day devoted to cooking and eating in the company of family?)

Then there's the creative impulse that seems to blossom in fall--maybe creativity is a member of the winter squash family, or perhaps some sort of a cruciferous vegetable? After weeks (er, months) of neglecting The Book, I feel new ideas and details and bits & pieces of narrative structure finally opening up in my mind, sending tendrils of excitement down long-dormant neural pathways. Who knows? Maybe this year I'll not only sign up for National Novel Writing Month, but actually accomplish something during it.

So even though there's always something a little melancholy about fall, and I know winter with its long stretches of dreary grey blahs won't be far away now, I'm always excited for the first days of digging through dresser drawers for sweaters, the first sight of a turning leaf.

I need to make sure we get a few more hikes in before the rains come and the trails get too sodden to walk.

Used meat

Times have been a wee bit tough at the old Pic-Dem homestead lately. Portland's economy is as un-booming as anywhere else's--paying gigs are few and far between. And Jim's getting up to speed (and beyond!) at his day (er, night) job now, but we're coming off a series of darn lean months here.

So in the never-ending quest to save money while eating well and frequently, we've discovered the joys of the Used Meat counter. This is the out-of-the-way corner of the butcher section where the supermarket stashes all the meat that is a day or two before its sell-by date. This is where, last week, I picked up a pound of ground pork for 97 cents and two pounds of top sirloin steak for $4.05. We bring it home, rewrap it and freeze it... or, if we'll be using it in the next few days, we just leave it in the fridge as-is.

We've also been saving even the wee-est scraps of leftovers to eat later. The very useful Love Food Hate Waste offers all kinds of ways to re-use leftovers: check it out! For lunch today, we're having "cafeteria day": the random bits of zucchini-rice gratin, baked spaghetti and chicken with chile-cream sauce that need to get eaten up so we can have our refrigerator (and our plasticware) back.

Last night, I used our bargain ground pork with some leftover cooked rice and the tail end of our rolled oats and seasoned breadcrumbs to make a meatloaf Jim thought was the best he'd had in ages:

Odds & Ends Meatloaf
Combine in a large bowl:
3/4 c any combination of cooked rice, dried or fine fresh breadcrumbs, rolled oats--the lower the proportion of rice to other starches, the firmer the meatloaf will be
1 Tbsp ketchup
1 Tbsp mustard
1 egg
1 tomato, seeded and chopped small: this is a great place to use a tomato that's gone almost too soft to eat
1 small carrot or zucchini, grated (optional)
1/2 medium onion, chopped small
Seasonings: I like dried oregano, minced garlic and a pinch of red pepper flakes; but you can use whatever you like
Salt and pepper

Crumble over and mix well with hands:
1 pound ground meat: I used pork; you can use whatever

On a baking sheet sprayed with cooking spray, form into four to six individual loaves, depending on how hungry you are and how much other stuff you'll have with the meal. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes.

Brush loaves with a mixture of:
2 Tbsp ketchup
2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
2 tsp brown sugar

Return to the oven and bake for 15 more minutes. Yum yum, especially with mashed potatoes and steamed petite peas, which is how we had it.

Also: it was once again chicken-cooking day today. (Crap! I swear I blogged about this before, but I can't find the post. Anyway, chicken-cooking day involves cooking chicken all day in the Crock-Pot, then dicing it up and dividing it into 2-cup portions for future use in such things as chicken salad, chicken casseroles or (my personal favorite) just kind of eating it out of the refrigerator, 'cause it really comes out delicious.) I timed myself this time. It took less than 6 minutes 26 seconds (the length of the podcast I was listening to) to get out the Crock-Pot, slice the onion, mix the seasonings, put the chicken in the pot and toss it all together, wash the cutting board/knife/countertops and get the dishwasher started. Holla!

Update: I found the original chicken-cooking day post. Yay me.

Summer Summer Squash & Rice

...Gratin, that is.

Per Summer's request, and reconstructed/revamped from memory from Deborah Madison's excellent Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone cookbook:

Summer Squash and Rice Gratin
Serves 6-8; leftovers are delicious.
Takes a long time (and every pan in the kitchen) to make, but it's really quite worth it.

1.5 cups long-grain rice (you can cook this ahead of time and set aside)
1.5 to 2 lbs fresh summer squash
3 shallots, diced small
1 medium onion
3 or 4 cloves garlic
Four or five healthy stems of fresh flat-leafed parsley
Two or three healthy stems of fresh basil
3 cups milk
3 dried bay leaves
1 tsp ground nutmeg
8 Tbsp butter, divided
6 Tbsp flour
0.75 cup grated Parmesan cheese
Black pepper
Salt

Bring rice, a generous sprinkling of salt and 2 cups water to boil in a medium saucepan; reduce heat and simmer, covered, for 15 minutes; then turn off heat and allow to rest for 5 minutes before removing rice to a very large bowl to cool. (This, BTW, is my 100% no-fail recipe for Really Good Rice every time. Except for the cooling part.)

While rice cooks, you will need to do some fancy footwork to manage the next two steps: prepping the squash and starting the sauce. Combine milk, bay leaves and 2 diced shallots in a medium saucepan and heat over medium heat just until it comes to a simmer. DO NOT LET IT BOIL! It will make an incredible mess, and it won't taste quite as nice as it would have otherwise. (Guess what I let happen last night?) When milk begins to simmer, immediately turn off heat and let steep for 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, back at the cutting board, shred or grate zucchini coarsely. A food processor will handle this in a jiffy, but it's pretty fast with an old-fashioned box grater too. Place in a colander, toss with a teaspoon or so of salt and leave in the sink to drain.

Now strip the leaves from the parsley and basil. Chop smallish, but don't mince. Combine in bowl with rice. Occupy the remaining wait time by dicing the onion and mincing the garlic.

Fifteen minutes should have passed by now; time to make the bechamel. First, strain the milk to remove the aromatics (I just pour it through a slotted spoon into a mixing bowl). Melt 6 Tbsp of the butter over medium heat in a medium to large saute pan (but not your largest; you'll need that for the zucchini). Whisk in the flour and cook, whisking constantly, for a few minutes until the mixture smells toasty and the color deepens a bit. Whisk in the milk all at once. It will look like a horrible lumpy mess at first; but only persevere, whisking, and it will eventually smooth out into a thick and sturdy and deliciously creamy whole. Whisk in the ground nutmeg plus a very generous amount of salt and pepper. You could even throw in a few red pepper flakes, were you feeling saucy. Place over very, very low heat (or, if you don't yet have enough dirty pans to wash, place in a double boiler) and simmer, re-whisking frequently, while you deal with the zucchini.

Wrap zucchini in a large, clean kitchen towel; fold towel closed, hold over sink and squeeze with all your might to get rid of excess moisture. You really want the squash as dry as you can get it; it will make the cooking process much faster.

Heat your widest saute pan over medium heat; melt butter. (Now is also an excellent time to begin preheating the oven: 350 degrees is good.) Add onion and cook, stirring frequently, until just translucent. Add garlic and cook and stir one minute more. Add zucchini and cook, stirring regularly, until pan is quite dry and zucchini is beginning to brown. This should take 7 to 10 minutes and will give you ample time to lightly grease a baking pan (a regular 9x13 will work, or you can use a pretty oval ceramic pan).

When zucchini is done, fold it into the bowl with the herbs and the rice, along with half the bechamel sauce. Taste and correct seasoning. Spread rice mixture evenly into baking pan.

Stir Parmesan into remaining sauce. Dollop over top of rice mixture and smooth out (but not too smooth--you're going for a rustic look here) with a rubber spatula.

Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until just bubbling at edges. (This is an excellent time to repair to the front porch with a cocktail while someone who is not you comes in and clears away the mess.) I discovered yesterday that turning on the broiler for the last minute or so produces a lovely browned effect, albeit one which is completely optional.

This holds together remarkably nicely when served; you don't need to do the usual let-it-stand thing. Serve with a green salad and plenty of wine.

Embarrassing, yet delicious

So this is what we ate for dinner. And by "ate" I mean "devoured," as in the boys sucked theirs up promptly and were sad that we had to save the rest for Papa. It's what my old friend Renee (not Renee Pearson, if you were wondering) would call "ditch bank Okie" food. She would call it that as she and her husband ate an entire panful.

This is dirt-freakin-cheap, which has been a theme for our meals around here lately, and would probably work just fine with veggie dogs if you were so inclined. (We were more inclined to use Hebrew National, which had been on a wicked sale.)

Corn Dog Casserole, or "Corn Dog-Like Substance" for the gourmets among us
serves 4-6
Melt 1 Tbsp butter in a skillet. Add 1 cup chopped celery and 1 cup chopped onion; saute 5 minutes. While veggies are cooking, quarter 6 hot dogs lengthwise, then cut each quarter into thirds width-wise. (Or "girthy-wise," if you happen to be a fan of that unutterably creepy commercial.) When onions are translucent, add hot dogs to skillet and cook, stirring frequently, until lightly browned. Remove 1/2 cup of mixture from skillet and set aside.

Meanwhile, combine 1 egg, 3/4 cup milk, 1 tsp rubbed sage and several grindings of black pepper in a large bowl. Fold in all but the reserved 1/2 cup hot dog mixture. Stir in a package of corn muffin mix (the 8.5-ounce Jiffy kind that comes in a retro-cheery blue and white box). Stir in a handful of shredded cheese; cheddar would be fine, 4-cheese Mexican blend is our default house choice. Sprinkle remaining hot dog mixture over the top. (You can poke the hot dog shards into the batter at artistic angles, if you're so inclined. This step might seem a little silly, but the protruding shards really get nice and brown and crispy... mmm.)

Spread into a greased 2-quart (I think... it's the small square Pyrex kind) casserole and bake at 400 for 30 minutes, or until well browned. If you like, you can sprinkle another handful of cheese over the top for the last 5 or so minutes of baking, but to me, that kind of seems like gilding the lily, or cheesing the hot dog, or something. Unnecessary, anyway.

Tastes pretty much exactly like a corn dog from the state fair, but is much tidier to eat and doesn't need to be fried.

When veggies (are about to) go bad

Another installment in what appears to be evolving into something of a series: "Stuff I Made for Dinner that Turned Out Well."

This is the second time I've made this particular soup. The kids love it (each of them had seconds tonight), Jim seems to quite like it, and I'm just a sucker for soup in general. Great for when there are veggies on the verge of inedibility in your refrigerator. It doesn't matter if they're kind of limp and schlumpy, because you're going to cook them into limp schlumpiness anyway. And the cream rounds it out very deliciously, too...

Cream of Borderline Veggie Soup, adapted from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything
Serves 4 to 6; leftovers reheat well
Trim and chop 1 to 1-1/2 pounds of substantial veggies. I used broccoli tonight, but cauliflower, carrots or asparagus would all work well too. Peel and dice 1 small-to-medium baking potato. (You can also use 1/4 to 1/3 cup of white rice, but I like the potato better. It thickens the soup nicely without being too assertive in the final result.)

If you're going to use an immersion blender to puree the mixture (as I was), chop the pieces fairly small, or you'll end up having to fish them out after cooking and re-chop them (as I did tonight). If you're using a food mill or a blender, you don't have to be so fiddly about the size of the pieces.

In a large, deep pot, combine chopped veggies, potato and 4 to 6 cups broth/stock/water (veggie or chicken broth would be OK; I just used hot water with some Better than Bouillon thrown in). Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer, covered, for 15 minutes or until veggies are falling-apart tender.

Puree mixture, either in situ with an immersion blender or, after a brief cooling period, with a food mill or blender. Return to pot. Whisk in 1/4 to 1 cup cream or half-and-half. (I like to use just a few tablespoons of cream and then half a cup or so of half-and-half. I guess you could use soymilk too, if you're feeding vegans or are one yourself.) Salt and pepper to taste, adding other seasonings if you like. I think a quarter-teaspoon or so of nutmeg and a couple shakes of hot sauce round out the flavors beautifully. Heat through, but don't let it boil.

Serve with garlic bread, biscuits or corn muffins. Yummy!